#WeeklyWisdom Deboning the catfish: perception vs. reality

So last night I watch reruns of Catfish:the tv show on MTV. For those who don’t know the meaning of catfish, Miriam Webster describes it as “to lure (someone) into a relationship by adopting a fictional online persona.”
Watching this show, I believe that there are levels to catfishing – in terms of developing a fictional online persona. In some shape or form, we have somewhat put ourselves under pressure to give out a false image of ourselves online.
What we perceive ourselves to be is sometimes different from what we really are in person.

We tend to ‘fake it till we make it’ but what really goes on is we spend most of the time in our lives faking it without knowing when if we’ve reached where we want to be. Simple example: certain people want to create an illusion that their career life is going very well, so they create a persona online where they take pictures of themselves rubbing shoulders with the upper crust of the business world. Others want to seem as if they’re living a ‘perfect life’ in terms of their relationship, eating out and clubbing. Newly dubbed as Doing it for the ‘gram, as people take more interest in displaying such on Instagram.
What makes us create false imaging and false portrayals of who we are? Is it really just for online purposes and not wanting to show the world all of us? Not entirely. Based on the various episodes on catfish, it is simply due to a form of unhappiness in our life. And instead of tackling the issue head on, we create a false portrayal of who we are, pretending that the person online is our true image. However, the truth lies within our heart. We know if we are truly happy or not, and the longer we do not deal with our happiness the deeper our issues become.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that you shouldn’t take pictures with your friends, hanging out or at business events. My simple message is that we have a level of catfish within ourselves that we do let out to create a certain image of who we are vs. who we want to be. The problem is that once we keep investing so much in the catfish we live a false tale of our true being, which results in creating an abyss of unhappiness within ourselves.

Sure we can share a picture or two, but everything must at least be realistic. We will be sure to reach some form of inner happiness once we’ve developed a comfort of who we are within ourselves and be honest about who we strive to be. As what I’ve seen on the show Catfish, developing something fake and unreal stunts your personal growth. We owe ourselves the ability to be the best version of who are; the best realistic version of who we are. This requires actual growth, not harboring a false image.